Charbonneau Commission: Blainville contractor tried to set up cartel

Monique Muise, THE GAZETTE11.26.2012

André Durocher, head of Excavations Panthère, testified on Wednesday, November 21, 2012, that his refusal to intentionally submit high bids on contracts in order to hand them to his rivals led to both him and his company being ostracized in Montreal and the surrounding regions.

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MONTREAL - A Blainville-based entrepreneur who assured the Charbonneau Commission inquiry earlier this week that he wanted nothing to do with collusion in Quebec's construction industry admitted on Wednesday that in 2008, he attempted to set up a cartel in the region north of Montreal.

André Durocher, head of Excavations Panthère, said he was sorry for what he had done, but argued that he had no choice but to convene a meeting of about 20 North Shore entrepreneurs in May of that year. They were being squeezed out by companies from Montreal and Laval, he testified, and if they wanted to avoid bankruptcy, they had to cooperate.

"When you're in survival mode, you'll do whatever it takes," Durocher explained. "You reach a point where you have equipment to maintain, men to pay . . . and you see there are systems of collusion everywhere, except where you are."

At that first meeting, held at a hotel in Blainville, Durocher admitted that he had a list of upcoming public works contracts on hand, and that the entrepreneurs around the table — none of whom were from Montreal — tried to divvy them up. They didn't get far.

Durocher described the breakfast as a complete "waste of time." Everyone wanted "the same piece of the cake," he claimed, and the scheme collapsed before it could even get off the ground.

"I regret what I did," Durocher said, adding that his entire family was opposed to the ill-fated plan from the start.

Earlier in the day, the entrepreneur told the commissioners that his company saved taxpayers millions but suffered major financial setbacks because, for years, he was unwilling to collude with his fellow construction bosses.

He said he considered Infrabec Construction and its president, Lino Zambito, to be his "enemy" and that he refused to cooperate with Zambito, whom he believed was cheating the system on the North Shore with the help of local engineering firms. During his own testimony before the commission in early October, Zambito admitted he helped rig dozens of public works contracts — mainly in Montreal — before his company went bankrupt in 2010.

Durocher testified Wednesday that his refusal to intentionally submit high bids on contracts in order to hand them to his rivals led to both him and his company being ostracized in Montreal and the surrounding municipalities.

On one particular roadworks contract in Mirabel, Durocher said, a competing company co-owned by Joe Borsellino and Yves Lalonde asked him to step aside and let them submit the lowest bid for the work. Durocher refused, submitting his bid as planned and winning the contract. Within three days, he said, the engineering firm that had drawn up the plans cancelled the call for tender. The firm, Groupe Séguin, allegedly came up with a reason to throw out the bids and send everyone back to Square One. The head of that firm was Michel Lalonde — brother of Yves Lalonde, explained Durocher.

The entrepreneur claimed that Michel Lalonde had actually called him personally beforehand, warning him that Groupe Séguin would cancel the contract if he went ahead, and that "we will remember."

That was the first of several examples Durocher provided over the course of the morning as commission lawyer Claudine Roy took him through nearly every contract his company bid on over the past decade.

On another contract in Montreal, Durocher claimed that he actually saved the city about $1.5 million by refusing to enter a bid of more than $9 million for the project at the request of another construction boss, identified as Gilbert Théorêt. In the end, Théorêt was forced to enter a bid of only $7.5 million to prevent Excavations Panthère from snatching up the project, Durocher claimed.

By the mid-2000s, Durocher's company was getting fewer and fewer jobs. Intimidation and administrative hurdles were the norm whenever they tried to bid on contracts in someone else's territory, the witness said, and engineering firms would sometimes require a certain brand of piping or other materials that were only used by one or two contractors — a roundabout way of favouring those companies.

Eventually, Excavations Panthère had to start accepting projects and completing them at cost to prevent its employees and the banks from getting too nervous about a lack of upcoming work, Durocher said.

"To survive as an enterprise, you have to keep good employees," he explained.

He added that his friend Pierre Papineau — who works for the company that provided insurance and surety bonds for Excavations Panthère — didn't lie when he testified before the commission on Tuesday, but that "he left some things out."

According to Durocher, Papineau's selective memory was not surprising.

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